


Exposure Therapy

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Comics), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: 616!kraglin, 616!yondu, Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien Sex, Anal Fingering, Breeding, Buglin, Consensual Somnophilia, Drunk Consent (don't try this IRL please), Dubious Consent, Egg Laying, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Oviposition, Rimming, Self-Lubrication, Somnophilia, Trans Kraglin, Trypophobia, Yondu makes Poor Choices, different characterizations to the Fandom Norm, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 04:40:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13605726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: Yondu told Kraglin his goolies didn't fit the Galactic Standard. Kraglin should've listened.





	Exposure Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> **I’m going to preface this by saying that I don’t believe anyone should be pressured into sex. Ever. If someone’s not into what you’ve got in your pants, whether you’re cis, trans, whatever; that is NOT a thing that they have to ‘get over’. Nobody owes anybody else shit when it comes to sex, no matter what tumblr seems to think. If someone isn’t attracted to your genitals and doesn’t want to have sex with you because of it – that’s life buddy. If you put pressure on them, that makes YOU the terrible person.**
> 
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> **With that being said, I really wanted to play with the idea of a trypophobic Kraglin fucking my 616!Yondu, whose crotch is basically a slimy lotus pod. You’re welcome.**
> 
>  
> 
> ****

First times have a reputation for being utterly shit. How did they gain this notoriety? Well, it's pretty simple when you think about it.

You’re piloting another man’s ship. What buttons make the engines rev? Which lever slams on the brakes?

Unless you want to be asking an endless stream of questions, the only way to find out is to experiment. You'd better be careful though – tread lightly, and always keep an apology locked, loaded, and ready for deployment on the tip of your tongue.

The second reason first times suck? You’re both way too obsessed with your performance. Get all het up about impressing the other guy and you forget to have fun yourself.

As for the third reason? The third, as Kraglin Obfonteri discovered, peeling down his captain’s slick-stained panties and coming face-to-crater with his crotch, was that puking ruined the mood.

He swallowed. He swallowed  _valiantly._

He swallowed until he couldn't taste acid. Then he swallowed several more times to be sure, as his stomach flip-flopped and his ears drooped and those horrible little holes flexed like they were breathing.

“That, um. That really ain’t standard equipment, sir.”

Yondu chuckled. He threaded his fingers through Kraglin’s hair and shoved his crotch into closer proximity with his nose.

“I ain’t no standard nothin’, dirtboy.”

Kraglin recoiled. He gulped his breakfast back down.

No. He’d committed. He was the one who came onto Yondu, for stars' sake! He couldn't surrender now. He wouldn't. For the sake of his species' pride, if nothing else.

Last time he hit his Lay he prowled around the ship like a hunting bilgesnipe, cursing the heat between his legs. Took him two cycles to succumb to the shame. He deposited in a series of socks looted from the bottom of the laundry pod, each in a crustier state of neglect than the last.

They went straight down the waste hatch once he'd finished, to be reconstituted into spare parts and edible byproduct by the atomic reconstruction unit. If anyone complained about mismatched pairs, they did so outside of the first mate's earshot.

Course, the situation never usually got so dire. Kraglin didn't let it. For ten Lunars of the Annual, Ravagers rockhopped from one port to the next, snaffling merc-work where they could and pillaging where they couldn't (or if they spotted an unarmed cruise ship, or if they had energy to burn, or if they just fancied a little excitement on the side).

This meant that Kraglin could count on being within egg-squirting range of a hooker whenever they made landfall.

But their current flight was a long-haul. Inter-cluster, 500K parsecs, give or take a klik. They’d be space-bound for three months solid.

Thus, unless Kraglin wanted a repeat of last week’s sock-defiling shenanigans, he needed to find someone willing to spread their legs and get fussed over in his nest. Someone who'd fit glove-tight round his ovi’ while Kraglin stuffed ‘em slow and sweet. Someone he wouldn't want to murder after several day-cycles in close company.

Yondu was the obvious choice. Man had a rep for buying three bot-hookers at once – if that didn't scream 'insatiable', nothing did. Plus, he and Kraglin actually  _liked_ each other. That was rare, in their line of work.

But if Kraglin wanted to lay his eggs in his captain, some reciprocation was expected. That was cool. Fair's fair, and all that. Kraglin didn't mind.

Not in theory.

His species came with three genders: layers, like him; carriers, and lactaters. Which led to a lot of confusion about why everyone called him a 'him' when he first got on board – but as the years passed and Kraglin's protestations that he was actually a  _zlkr_  went unanimously ignored, he learned to live with it.

Anyway.

While the layers only got horny after enough eggs developed in their sac to form a viable litter, the carriers and the lactaters boasted significantly higher libidos. It was in Kraglin’s nature, practically inscribed in his DNA, to get off on pleasuring his partners.

But until now, he’d only ever seen genitalia that fit the galactic standard. As in: dicks for males, pussies for females, with the occasional ovipositor or an A’askavarian tentacle tossed in for variety.

This? Well. Captain's goods were  _different._

That was one way of putting it. Kraglin thought of several others, most of which would earn him a punch and the rest, the airlock.

Yondu's groin was holey as a wheel of Shinibar cheese. Kraglin counted ten individual craters, although his compound eyes repeated them fifty times each, a swarm of dark flushed divots that would look less out of place on a critter dredged from a deep-sea trench.

“Well?” Yondu purred. “Like what you see?”

Kraglin kept his mouth shut. One thing was for sure – if he opened it, lies wouldn't be all he spewed.

His hands shook where they rested on his captain's thighs. The rest of the man was pretty-pretty-pretty, from his grin to his belly and his dirty, crack-nailed toes (he'd abandoned his boots by the door, which made stripping him much easier. As of ten seconds ago, Kraglin no longer classified that as a good thing.)

What cruel twist of fate landed him with  _this abomination_ in his pants?

Kraglin blew in the vain hope it might scare the holes away. Foiled.

A delicious shiver concentrated at the base of Yondu's spine. He pressed closer, fingers knotted in Kraglin’s muttonchops and crotch nudging his furry chin.

“Oh – fuck.  _Kraglin._ ”

Fuck indeed. They were  _leaking._

A snotty gunge oozed from each hole, dribbling down Yondu's inner thighs. The snail trails stank – wet leaves and sea salt. Kraglin forced down his gag.

“You, uh, take venereal vacs boss?”

He didn't sign up for this. If that was pus, he walked out this room right now, possibly off this ship too. He hopped in an escape pod and he didn't look back.

Yondu swatted the back of his head. “Course. I might be an a-hole, but I ain't a total cunt.”

Kraglin remained unconvinced. Jelly trembled on the lip of the largest hole before sliding wetly over. It hit the floor with a splat.

Yondu didn't notice. He cupped his crotch, deciding Kraglin required more practical tutelage. “Look. Like this.”

He palmed the whole area. When his hand moved away, it was sopping. Kraglin shuddered when it smeared through his fur. It didn't smell  _awful –_ just pungent, and far from his own species' musk.

Yondu continued the lesson, demonstrating with the tip of his finger. “Ya can play with the holes, s'long as ya don't stick nothin' big in 'em. See?”

He stirred the central one. It opened a little larger than the others, and when Yondu dipped the tip of his index inside – locking his legs so his knees didn't fold, head flung extravagantly back – the rim bulged out, squashing its neighbors closed.

“F-fuck. S'real good.”

It looked it – for Yondu. Kraglin was glad one of them got something out of this. Himself? Well, if he was capable of getting aroused outside of his laying period, his ovi' would be about as much use as a dead slug.

Yondu rolled his head around his neck. He craned at him over his pierced chest and his belly, light glinting off his necklaces and the gold caps on his teeth.

“C'mon,” he mumbled, canting his hips.

Kraglin wished he had eyelids so he could put them to good use. But no – there was no shutting this out. Nothing to do but grin and bear it, for captain's sake.

A hole brushed his lips. It contracted: a slimy kiss.

“Quit lookin’ at it like it’s gonna bite ya and get to the lickin’, boy. Promise you'll do fine.” His chuckle didn't sound wholly humerous. “I'm a tad more sensitive than's regular fer my kind. Didn't do me no favors back home, but ya could work me off with yer foot and I'd still paint the ceilin'.”

Paint the ceiling...? Kraglin shot the cabin's low-slung rafters a concerned once-over. He'd thought that crusty patch was lichen – common on galleons as old and well-loved as theirs. But on closer inspection...

On closer inspection, closer inspection was a piss-poor idea. Kraglin did his best to wipe the past half-minute from his mind.

“Can I play with yer ass?” he asked, with admirable hope.

Yondu paused a moment, tongue playing with the chip in his front teeth. Then he shrugged. He shambled around, his dropped pants hobbling his ankles.

Oh. Okay. This bit Kraglin could get behind. Hopefully literally, next time he hit his Lay.

He imagined it: his plumped-up ovi' smacking between chubby blue cheeks. Bending Yondu over a desk, a bed, a console table. Hell, shoving him up against the observation deck window and dragging him onto his knot until he stuck there, all trembly and dishevelled, that mouth hanging open with not a single insult leaking out.

Nice image. Perhaps, if he could keep Yondu facing away from him for the duration of their trysts, this was salvageable.

Kraglin groaned happily as he petted his captain's backside. He carried muscle under all that squish – each cheek felt delightfully pert, rippling when he swatted them and bouncy to the touch.

Kraglin nuzzled in. He ground his nose along the crease, bumping off his captain's tailbone. Yondu's legs shot wide, pants straining between his heels.

“Hell, pissant. Give a guy a little warnin' – fuck!”

A-Chiltarians didn't have eyelids. As their compound lenses were considerably hardier than the mammalian alternative, Kraglin only had to lick them once every minute, and then the motion was so practiced that it barely registered – in and out, fast as a chameleon harpooning a fly.

But this also meant that his tongue was long and flexible. It wiggled against Yondu now: a tantalizing spearpoint, prising apart the pinch.

Yondu swore something choked in a language Kraglin didn't recognize. His feet skidded as wide as his pants allowed, and his thighs wobbled as he struggled to keep his balance, reaching behind himself to grip Kraglin's ears.

He clicked – a high and rapid chirr of his tongue off the back of his teeth – as Kraglin pulled one cheek tenderly aside and fluttered his tongue-tip on his entrance until the little star softened.

That was all he needed. Kraglin surged forwards. Surged  _in._

Yondu'd come well-prepared. Kraglin tasted nothing but flesh and lubricant too fruity to be natural. He made a mental note. He'd need to keep well-stocked – apparently, Yondu only got sticky around the front.

Which was... Ugh.  _So_ not what he wanted to be thinking about right now.

He released Yondu's buttock. They squeezed his face as Yondu rocked back and tensed and squirmed and did his damned utmost not to fall over.

“Krags – Kraglin – maggot – dirtboy – c'mon now -”

Kraglin curled his tongue inside him. It explored, filling Yondu with a supple swell, pushing deeper with each plunge. Kraglin grabbed Yondu's hips when a flick had him all-out fitting, quivering as he ground back on his mouth.

“Oh – oh  _fuck._ C'mon, c'mon...”

Yondu clutched Kraglin's hand hard enough to leave the impressions of his nails dug into his fur. Blunt nails, rounded nails, the nails of a prey-species. Kraglin, engrossed in his spelunking, didn't realize what was going on until Yondu guided that hand between his legs.

Between his legs from the  _front._

Kraglin froze.

Yondu's hips kept rolling. His whines and clicks hiked over a lusty mountain. He swayed, thighs bunching and ass aflutter.

That would feel amazing around Kraglin's ovi'. But he couldn't think about that right now. He couldn't think of anything but the abhorrent divots against his fingertips.

 _Suckling_ on his fingertips, in fact. Wherever they grazed a hole, the skin dipped in, soft as rancid meat.

If it was unwise to chunder over a guy's knees, doing it while you had your tongue rammed up his bunghole had to rank worse on the etiquette scale.

Kraglin wrenched back. His tongue yanked at the root – Yondu squeezed on instinct, body grabbing on.

Blood thundered in Kraglin's ears. He could  _see them._  Ten, spread out in his minds eyes, arranged like the seeds in a lotus pod. A gland – or a gonad, or whatever the fuck it was – bulged within, just visible at each hole's heart.

His wrist shook where Yondu held it, clamped so tight he threatened to cut off the blood circulation. That would be a blessing. At least then Kraglin wouldn't have to feel it: the dilate and shrink against his palm, ten tiny pecks in time with Yondu's shuddery breath.

“Krags...” Yondu wouldn't stay standing much longer. He clamped up hard enough to shudder, muscles defined all along the backs of those beautiful thighs.

Kraglin stared at them. His gaze traced the spiral tattoos with mounting desperation. He needed something to ground him. Anything but this, as Yondu hitched against his fingertips again and again, webbed to them with gluey slime.

“Krags, Krags, Krags-Krags-Krags-Krags- _Krags -_ ”

Nope. He had to get some distance. 

Kraglin's tongue wasn't stuck – not quite. But Yondu released him far too slow. His pucker puffed, stretching to let Kraglin slither out, all swollen and shiny with spit.

He listened to the sputtered clicks when Yondu came, and stomached the sluice against his hand – the jet, more like – with a grimace.

It hit his palm and rebounded off, like holding a teaspoon too close to a tap. Yondu's knees sagged. That was all the warning Kraglin got, before his captain subsided to the floor.

The tip of his tongue popped loose. Yondu met the ground with a defeated clatter, necklaces drumming off steel.

He curled on his side, moaning. Kraglin knelt over him. His soaked hand clenched – soaked  _arm;_ Yondu hadn't quite hit the ceiling but he sure came close.

Juices caked his fur. It was less sloppy than the gunk Yondu leaked before, a fine mist that condensed upon meeting anything solid.

“How the fuck d'you jerk it?” he managed. Yondu flopped dramatically against his knees.

“Usually... go... to bathroom...”

“Hell. Ya coulda mentioned that earlier.” Kraglin stretched out his fingers, slick clinging in webs. “Ya made a right mess.”

Yondu cracked an accusative eye. “I was  _gonna,_  but  _someone_  shoved their  _tongue_  up my ass.”

He raised a valid point.

“You let me.”

Valid points all around. Yondu conceded with a good-natured raspberry.

“Well,” Kraglin said. He gave Yondu's shoulder an ambivalent pat. The man looked kinda ridiculous like this: his coat spread around him in tatty feathers, his pants bunched over his bare feet, toes curled under to crimp the sole. Kinda adorable too. Kinda everything Kraglin liked in one small and snarky package – if it weren't for those stars-forsaken holes.

He scratched at one furred cheek. “Um. You have fun?”

Yondu's cocked brow almost made him doubt himself. He didn't get the chance. “Fun?  _Fun?_ Damn near broke me, Krags.”

Kraglin shrank. Shit. Had his nails caught him? Had he – stars forbid – torn anything?

He never considered himself a coward, but at the same time, he really didn't want to peek between Yondu's legs and find out.

“'Broke' you?”

“In a good way.” Yondu extended a clumsy arm, the thumb rubbing under Kraglin's eye while he gathered a handful of whiskers. “ _Damn_ good. So damn good I'm thinkin' we can do this again. An' when ya next get yer – whassit called?”

“Lay,” Kraglin provided, although he couldn't have felt further from it. If his eggs had the ability to wither and die, they'd have made good on it.

“Lay, ya can put 'em in me. Wanna feel ya filling me up.” Yondu's legs rubbed, and his jaw went a little slack. Those dopy pink eyes swung to Kraglin's, slow as if in a daze. “Wanna get spread out round yer cock, want'chu to leave me gapin'...”

Kraglin wanted that too. He wanted that  _so damn bad._ But...

“It's called an ovi'.” Kraglin nervously assessed his captain's flush, his navy-dipped ears, the sweat shimmering on satin-soft nipples and the labored pant of his chest under their chains. Oh no. “Your kind's got a short refractory, huh?”

“Nah, think thas just me.” Yondu plucked at a soaked hole, making the lot of them wring tight. Like the blinking eyes of a spider.

God, that image was in Kraglin's head and it weren't never coming out again.

“Used to call me an  _oversexed freak,_ y'know. That's the basic translation – give or take some religious bullcrap about  _Anthos an' his light._ ” He spoke the words flippantly, although a bitterness infected his eyes and the too-wide stretch of his scowl. “Jus' cause a man's got needs. Don't miss 'em at all, stuck up buncha prudes.”

He changed tack before Kraglin could respond. Lucky, given he had no idea what to say.

“So. What's your deal. This Lay – a cultural thing?”

“Biological.”

Yondu toyed with himself as they spoke, idle and lazy, almost like he didn't quite realize he was doing it. His largest hole nibbled on his pinky finger. Yondu slotted it in to the second knuckle to stir the internal teat.  _Ugh._

“I'm an egg-layer," Kraglin continued.

Yondu's forehead crinkled. “Yer a chick, Obfonteri?” He scanned him up and down again. “Can't say I'dda guessed.”

Kraglin shook his head. “Egg-layer. Ain't the same – there's a difference.” He rubbed his chest through his t-shirt, using his clean hand. The other was dead to him. He was mostly pretending it didn't exist, in the hopes of banishing the phantom grasp of ten wet holes at his fur. “Don't got no milky-bits.”

“Milky-bits?”

“Y'know. Where ya feed a grub.”

“Oh.” Yondu's grin cut laughter lines around his eyes. They weren't permanent– yet – but baldie species showed their age through wrinkles rather than grey roots. If Kraglin focused on Yondu's smirk and not his squishy dip into one hole, then the next, then the next, he could almost remember why he liked the guy. “I got them. In my pouch, y'know.” He patted the stitched line on his stomach. Kraglin tilted his head.

“Thought that were a scar?”

“Nah.” Yondu demonstratively plucked between two silvery staples, pushing his necklaces out the way. They fell over his back instead, jangling like wind chimes. Kraglin's attention honed on the flap Yondu lifted, pinched between his finger and thumb. “Stitched it up 'bout the same time they lopped off my crest.”

Said so breezily. Like they were discussing the solar weather. Kraglin considered his options.

“Looks hard to clean,” he replied.

Yondu thinned his eyes at him. It had taken Kraglin several years to learn the meaning behind that facial expression. Eyelids still freaked him out, just a little, although he'd much rather study them than Yondu's porous crotch. Lashes at least were pretty, and Yondu had surprisingly long ones.

Captain's glower didn't last long. Whatever he searched for on Kraglin's face, he didn't find it – that, or Kraglin's features were just as confusing and alien as his were to him.

“Yeah.” He pinched his mound, kneading it so his thighs splaying out, trussed ankles bobbing off the floor. “Got some special showerheads an' shit.”

Kraglin trusted himself to read the timbre of his voice better than his mug. A smile could mean mirth, bared teeth, or both. Kraglin, truth be told, found them both pretty darn attractive. The first made him want to snuggle and smooch and all those despicably soft things that Ravagers never talked about, but indulged in on the sly. The second ignited a deeper urge, a darker urge: to pin and sink his fangs into Yondu's nape until he went slack beneath him, legs spread with a whimper and a sigh.

Point was, right now Yondu spoke cold and clipped, pared of anything but function. He wanted a topic change; Kraglin was almost too eager to oblige him.

“So those aren't for feedin' brats,” he said, and daringly brushed the back of one claw over a nipple. He regretted it in short order. Yondu gave a full-body shudder, eyes flashing dark.

“No,” came the husky reply. “These're fer playin' with.”

He freed his fingers with a sloppy pop, and – uncaring for the goo – helped himself to his other pectoral. He bullied it mercilessly, tweaking the teat. The piercing flashed as he rolled it between his fingertips. Gold – cap'n's favorite – inset with a ruby gem.

Kraglin wanted to take it in his mouth and suck. Kraglin wanted to tie Yondu's legs closed so he never had to look at his genitals again.

Kraglin wanted to kiss him, to bite him and fuck him and knot him while he laid his load deep in his ass in a parody of a breed.

Kraglin wanted to shove him away and run as far in the opposite direction as possible.

“My species,” he started, tugging carefully at Yondu's other tit, mindful of his claws. “We got three sexes, yeah? The egg-layers and the carriers get it on the traditional way, but the lactaters... So long as they ain't nursing, you can push 'em right over just from playing with their nips.”

Ten of them, in a line all down their torso. They got perky and delectably sensitive when aroused. Kraglin elected against mentioning the complex social strata that underpinned A-Chiltarian life – those old prejudices everyone outwardly decried but still privately, in a small space deep in their mind, believed.

Grubs only had one layer and one carrier, but they could take milk from as many lactaters as were needed. While plenty of A-Chiltarian bonded triads stuck together through thick and thin, there was always that pervasive whiff of a power imbalance, putting an unfair slant on the scales.

But sociology lessons and bedroom atmosphere didn't mix. Kraglin kept his voice sultry as he crushed Yondu's pec, twisting the gold bar until he keened.

“Per'aps yer the same, boss. Per'aps I can get you off like this.”

_Perhaps I never need to touch your holes again. Except the back one – I can handle that._

Yondu shook his head – laughingly at first, then more firm. He angled into a low bridge, hips a hypnotizing sway.

“Gonna take a bit more'n that, baby. C'mon. One more. Really milk me out.”

Kraglin chewed his cheek lining. Like this, stooped over his captain, almost nose-to-nose, there was no hiding. No shying away. Nothing but the pair of them and the scent of their mingling breath. And Yondu's half-lidded eyes, and the adamant skywards shunt of his crotch.

“C'mon,” Yondu murmured. He hung his arm over Kraglin's neck. His hairless flesh was sinfully smooth, so supple that the predatory part of Kraglin longed to run his claws along it, open it up so he could lick all the gleaming muscle within. He sent that thought the same way as the nausea – down, deep down, to burrow and lodge in the lining of his gut.

“C'mon, big boy.” Kraglin liked that somewhat better than 'maggot'. “Be mean to me, thassit.” His lip slid up a shiny gold tooth. “Make my cry, baby. Teach me right, make me beg.”

Oh shit. Kraglin would be all over that. He  _wanted_ to be all over that.

But... He couldn't.

 

“Roll over,” he murmured in Yondu's ear. “Gonna stick my fingers in yer ass.”

Yondu sniggered like he'd told a particularly good joke. “Nah, yer gonna put 'em in here.”

Kraglin couldn't help it. He shuddered. The grip on his wrist faltered.

“Hey. Hey now, Krags. Whas all this?”

Kraglin didn't have the words to explain.  _Looking at your goolies makes me want to vomit. I don't think I can do this. I really, really want to, but I'm already going to be seeing your bits in my nightmares._

No. Stars above, he couldn't say any of that.

This  _wasn't Yondu's fault._ Sure, he hadn't exactly given Kraglin adequate warning. But he'd  _said_  his equipment weren't regular. Kraglin nodded along, muttering 'same, same, same' in a bid to shed Yondu of his clothes. He had no one to blame but himself.

And, obviously, whichever cackling cosmic being scrawled this joke into the great book of Kraglin’s life. Kraglin didn’t know which was the culprit, but he resolved to piss on any alter he came across for the foreseeable future, just to cover his bases.

“I’m sorry,” he told Yondu. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Then he pulled his hand loose, patted him awkwardly on the stomach, rolled to his feet, and left.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _It’s not you, it’s me?!_ ”

So his comm screeched five minutes later. Kraglin winced, turning the volume dial down. He needn’t have bothered. Yondu’s enraged shriek blew out the speakers – feedback whistled from every rasp of his captain’s breath.

“Cap’n, look. It ain’t what you think.”

At least Yondu had the decency to wait for Kraglin to reach his own cabin before starting the interrogation. Kraglin made his berth on the far side of the Bridge, in a low-roofed dome lined with unfolding wall storage drawers, smaller than Yondu’s by a few meters square. Five airlock-sealing doors, an assembly of nav consoles, and a whole lot of insulation tubing spanned the space between them.

It didn’t feel like nearly enough.

“Not what I think?” Yondu raved. “Ya tellin’ me what I think now, dirtboy?”

“If ya call me dirtboy when we’re fucking, it makes it really hard to tell when you’re actually mad at me, sir.”

“Oh yeah?” Yondu crowded close to his holo-cam. Kraglin, being of a lanky sort, wasn’t used to looking up at him. Like this, lit from below by the halo of green light from his comms watch, captain  looked positively demonic. “Lemme spell it out for ya simple-like then,  _dirtboy._  I’m  _mad_ at ya. I’m _pissed off._ I’m fuckin’  _incandescent –_ “

Kraglin frowned. “Ain’t that a sort of solar bulb?”

Yondu flapped an irritable hand. “Translator thing.”

Kraglin had been, until Yondu’s interruption, lying flat on his back, head on the pillow and legs overshooting the nest by a good foot. Now he sat, wincing at the twinge in his joints. His species weren’t built for kneeling, especially not on uncarpeted steel. He’d do it for Yondu, if only for as long as it took to get the captain all flushed and jelly-legged, amenable to being pummelled into a bed.

A-Chiltarians, especially layers like him, didn’t take kindly to submission. Didn’t take kindly to having to apologize neither.

They wanted to lay their eggs, keep their incubators happy and warm, defend their nests and occasionally snuggle up with their mates and play with the pair of them until all three were a quivering mess.

But Kraglin weren’t on the homeworld anymore. That meant he had to adapt, and that meant he had to suck it up, admit he was in the wrong, and stop Captain making that stupid face, underlip jutted forwards so far that all Kraglin could think about was kissing it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

There proceeded another minor explosion.

“You’re  _sorry?_ Yer damn right yer sorry, maggot! The hell was all that about? Don’t tell me ya only  _just_  got cold feet about fuckin’ yer boss!”

Kraglin shook his head. “Ain’t that.” It was true. He could follow orders, even if it left him champing his teeth. If Yondu ever got too pushy, Kraglin knew could fight him off, make him pay.

Cap’n relied on his wits more than weaponry. According to a number of less-than-reliable sources, the Centuarian race owned some form of ancestral projectile that could be controlled by whistling, which sounded about as credible as any other rumor grinding through the galaxy's mill. Kraglin had yet to see evidence that the Centaurians were anything other than a bunch of prey-critters, who'd formed tribes a few thousand generations back in a bid to reduce the number who got eaten on a year-by-year basis.

Yondu’s testimonies certainly couldn’t be trusted. He had an investment in making himself out to be bigger and badder than he was – kinda like he was doing now, in fact.

Point was – they might have a power imbalance based on rank, but they had an even bigger one in terms of strength and the sharpness of their canines. The two went some way towards cancelling each other out.

“I said it ain’t what you think.”

Kraglin's bed, like most up here in the black, was designed for practicality over comfort – no springs, just a hard board padded out with cushioning. Kraglin had taken interior design into his own hands. He'd nabbed a spare bunk from the crew quarters, pushing them together and lining them with scraps of fabric and pillows liberated from cruise ships dumb enough to cross No Man’s Space without an escort and a helluva lot of guns. He could now call himself the proud owner of a semi-viable nest.

It might not impress any native of his homeworld, but Kraglin didn’t want one of those. He wanted Yondu.

Brash, loud, a jibe always ready to jab the backside of an underperforming crewmate. Smart as a Hyastlan star-fox and thrice as cunning.

He wanted all of him, even the ugly bits. The wrath that flared hot and simmered cold, the grudges hidden behind grins, that twist of sadism that skyrocketed him to the pinnacle of the Ravagers’ shambolic rank-system and kept him there longer than any predecessor.

But there were some things he couldn’t stomach. And he was sorry, but that was the way life rolled.

He put all that into words (best he could, and wielding pruning secateurs at the mushier bits). Yondu crooked an eyebrow. Then, resolutely, he snapped off the comm.

Well, that was that. Kraglin sighed, deflating back against his bed.

Shame. They’d had a good run of it, the pair of them. First mate and captain, brothers in arms, drinking buddies and rivals at the range and damn near everything between. Kraglin wouldn’t enjoy discarding this life and finding a new one aboard a different ship with an unfamiliar crew, but hey.

He’d done it before.

He was just hitting that lax, soggy-brained mulchiness that preceded sleep when a fist banged on his door.

“Go away,” he muttered, rolling to nuzzle his pillow. “Can wait for morning.” Unless it was an engine blow-out, in which case by morning they'd all be too dead to care.

Yondu didn’t do him the courtesy of knocking twice.

One of the many privileges of being captain involved biocoded access for every door on the ship – or at least, that was a privilege until you marched into a store cupboard to find a gunner and a new A’askavarian recruit in the midst of what was either a mating or a ritualistic sacrifice.

(They'd chortled over that together, him and Yondu. Passing a bottle back and forth, zesty moonshine flavoring the spit they swapped from mouth, to bottle, to each other. How long ago that seemed.)

“Wake up, scum.” Yondu's boots struck the steel floor like clangers on a bell. The door closed with a fwoosh, coat dancing around his calves in a vigorous polka. His pants hugged his hips, gut drooping ever-so-slightly over.

Funny – Kraglin never noticed the lack of a bulge at his crotch before, but now he couldn’t stop looking at it.

Yondu stalked straight to the bed. He slammed his knuckles into the wall by Kraglin’s temple, whose long ears twitched at the boom.

“You done me wrong,” he growled, rank air raking Kraglin’s muttonchops. “Now you gotta pay.” Kraglin’s nose shrivelled back into his face. But he wasn’t cowed yet.

“Pay? Look, I can shift crews next port. S’cool – I got enough of a bounty to land a job with any scum sucker what's lookin’ for business on the extra-legal side.”

Yondu drew himself up. “Defect, ya mean.” Now, that was just unfair.

“It ain’t defectin’ if I’m fired!”

Yondu’s bald brows pinched together, his forehead crumpling in a way that reminded Kraglin of hairless felines. “Who said I’m firin’ ya?”

Oh. Kraglin shrugged, carding the sweaty hair at his nape. “Kinda thought it was implied, is all.”

“I don’t fire folks for not wantin’ to bang me.”

That was a relief. “Maybe ya oughta put that on the rule list,” Kraglin joked. “Y’know, the one ya hand out to new recruits.”

It fell flat. Yondu stared at him close range. With Kraglin sat at the end of his nest and Yondu stood besides, they were almost of a height.

“I do get mighty pissed off though,” he said softly, “when a guy pretends to be into me. Specially when he don’t follow through.”

“Huh?” Kraglin’s jaw dropped by an unflattering inch. “But I weren’t pretending to be into ya, sir. I asked ya if you wanted to help me out with my Lay, remember?”

“An’ I said it’s a cap’n’s duty to look after his crew.” Yondu was making that narrow-eyed face again. His mouth pinched bloodless, lips china-white. “Not cause I had to, though. Cause I  _wanted_ to. So if ya didn’t actually wanna fuck me, what the hell  _did_ ya want?”

Oh. Coming at it from that perspective… Yeah, Kraglin saw how that looked dodgy. Damn. He’d fucked this up even more irrevocably than he thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His head dipped low, ears drooping. “I’ll take an escape pod, head back to port –“

“Nearest port’s parsecs away. It’ll take ya twice as long to reach with an escape pod lightdrive – ain't no way you can fit enough provisions. Only way you’ll wind up is dead.” Yondu shook his head. “Quit tryin’ to run away, dumbass. Yer stayin’ right where you is.”

“But –“

“No buts. Only reason yer leavin’ is cause ya wanna go. Or if yer answer don’t suit me, an’ I shove y’all out the airlock. Ya got that, kid?”

Kraglin slumped against his backrest, the wall cold enough to make his t-shirt stick to his fur. “I’m most likely older than you,” he said, but it wasn’t with any venom. “My kind age slower than most.” Yondu delivered a mocking pat to his ears.

“All this talk an’ you ain’t yet followed orders. Sounds like yer dancin’ around a subject, Obfonteri. What the hell were ya tryin’ to get outta me? Info? Promotion? Ain’t no higher ya can climb up this here ladder, not unless…”

His eyes sharpened, keen as a Novahawk. Kraglin might categorize Yondu as  _prey species_ in a part of his mind that never got free reign over his mouth, but right now the guy couldn't look more carnivorous.

“Were ya gonna kill me?” Yondu murmured.

He leaned in, gripping a handful of cheek fur so Kraglin couldn't turn his head.

“Wassat what you was thinkin’ in that dumb lil’ head of yours, maggot? That you’d get me all sloppy an’ wantin’ for ya, then push a knife up to nestle between my ribs?”

 

“You’re one hell of a paranoid bastard. How many times I stopped someone stickin’ a knife in yer back?”

“Long enough to think you got sole stabbing rights."

Kraglin grabbed the woolly collar of Yondu's coat. His chains dangled between them, lustrous even in the low light. They looked warm and summery, solidified ingots of starshine. When they hit Kraglin's forearms though, he found only cold.

“I” he said, pitching his voice low enough to rumble, “would  _never_ betray ya, sir.” Pause. “Or at least, I’d have to be paid one helluva lot.”

Yondu’s sneer relaxed. It twitched at the edges, threatening a snigger.

“Thas more like it. Was about to shoot ya for a skrull.” A light tap at Kraglin’s chest. Oh. Yondu’s pistol – when the hell had he drawn that?

Most likely around the same time when Kraglin was staring into his eyes. Dammit.

“You ain’t no skrull… Are ya, Kraglin?”

Work their line of business long enough, and that enquiry guaranteed to crop up. Kraglin sifted through his mind. He foraged out the words he and Yondu settled on over a tankard of something pube-curling several moons ago, to be committed to memory in case one was ever suspected of being an imposter.

At the time, they'd just watched a rip of a Terran movie – a two-dimensional holo – and decided it wasn't worth the extortionate price tag attached to all 'cultural relics' from an uncontacted species.

“My name is Mary fuckin’ Poppins an’ I fly with a stars-damn umbrella.”

Yondu chuckled.

“An’ ya just wanted to make me say that, didn’t ya? Dick.”

“It worked.” Cheer restored, Yondu stopped his attempt to garrote Kraglin with his own neck fur. Kraglin returned the favor, releasing his captain’s collar so he could flump on the bed beside him.

The pistol – much to Kraglin’s relief – returned to his thigh holster. A-Chiltarians were many things, but plasma-proof wasn’t one of them.

“Okay. Now spill – what was the big brouhaha? Seemed mighty down with stickin’ yer dick in me until ya got my pants off.”

Like this, Yondu sat side-saddle on the edge of the nest, his boots not quite brushing the ground, and Kraglin with his legs stretched out beside him, things very almost felt normal again. Until Yondu said that, and all the images Kraglin had been striving  _so hard_ to purge came rushing back.

“It’s an ovi’.” He kneaded at his misbehaving stomach. “Like I told ya. An’ – an’ – I really wanna put it in ya. Truly, I do. But –“

Yondu heaved a dramatic sigh.

“But the holes,” he said. “Yeah. Heard that one before.”

Oh. Kraglin supposed the residents of the central planets weren’t any more appreciative of Yondu’s genitalia than he was. But – hey.

Wait a minute.

“So,” he said, wrapping his arm around his closest knee. “If ya figured that were gonna be a problem, why didn’t ya say shit?”

Yondu shrugged, a quick bunch and release of muscle. “Figured it would put ya off. An’ it weren’t like ya said  _no..._ “

Somehow, that stung. Yondu entered into their little arrangement knowing Kraglin was liable to freak out the moment he laid eyes on his goolies, and what did he do?

Well, for starters, he didn’t tell him. Other than that precursory  _might not be what’chu expect,_ which revealed precisely nothing.

He certainly didn’t back off when Kraglin was gagging and struggling to think of anything but what was being waggled imperiously in his face.

“You knew?” he asked, just to be sure. Yondu’s figure turned to him fifty times across fifty lenses, a synchronized ballet in smelly grey leather. “You  _knew_ I weren’t having fun, but –“

“But I kept goin’ cause I’m a mean lil’ fucker who only cares about gettin’ laid?” Yondu fluttered his lashes like one of the harlots who lined the wharfs to wave space-sailors home. His laugh snapped brittle as ration cakes in mess. “Ya didn’t say no, Krags. Ya didn’t never say no.”

Yondu, forcing him to touch his holes as he shied away from them.

Yondu cumming against his fingers while Kraglin cringed and shook.

Well, that put a different light on things. Kraglin had used others for sex and he’d been used in turn – like anything else in a Ravager’s life, pleasure could be transactional. But he’d never felt this dirty afterwards.

“Ain’t nice, is it,” Yondu crooned. He wasn’t looking at Kraglin, but his voice spat vicious enough to make up for it: barbs that raised blisters under Kraglin's hairy pelt. “Think ‘bout what it’s like havin’ folks pull down yer pants and run away. Have ‘em call ya disgustin’, a  _freak.”_ That laugh raked claws down Kraglin’s spine. “I’m a freak on my homeplanet an’ a freak up here, an’ –“

“Stars, would you shut up?”

That shocked that sneery smirk off Yondu’s face, like he’d somehow proved something to everyone who’d ever snubbed him. “Uh. Whassat now, maggot?”

“You!” Kraglin seethed. He shoved Yondu’s shoulder, hard enough to knock him off the nest.

“Ow! Hell, Krags, what the –“

“Ya think that’s a fuckin’ excuse?”

The volume stifled Yondu’s snark more than anything else. His eyes went huge, almost as round as Kraglin’s, and he flipped himself from where he’d landed hard on his knees, crawling belly-up away from him. “Krags –“

“Ya think I ain’t had folks turn up their noses at my bits?” Kraglin stood, shadow falling square on his captain.

Yondu halted like the darkness was a physical cage, keeping him locked in place. His eyes got impossibly wider as Kraglin stalked towards him. Kraglin had to ignore the wobble in his mind, the insistence that this was  _mate_ and Kraglin should be making him smile and curl close and snap playfully at his fingers, not glance about for escape.

“I,” he finished, hunkering over Yondu’s prone form, face close enough that Yondu’s rapid breaths stirred his whiskers. “Ain’t  _never_ made someone do shit they didn’t want to.”

Yondu didn’t blink. His eyes were huge and pink and far too liquid. Kraglin located the pining urge in his gut –  _mate scared, mate sad, make mate happy –_ and crushed it resolutely underfoot.

“No need to worry about firin’ me,” he said, standing and glaring woodenly through his porthole. “I’m off this ship, soon as we hit civilized space.”

Yondu opened his mouth to say something, dig his crypt deeper, decimate what they’d so-very-almost built. Then he decided against it.

He scrambled to his feet, still a little shaky. He brushed off his duster and flounced from Kraglin’s cabin with his fists clenched around an imaginary throat.

“Yeah,” said Kraglin quietly, poking the button to close the door. “That’s what I thought.”

 

* * *

 

 

One month of avoiding Yondu.

One month of fucking up his bodyclock, waking early to log his hours during the skeleton shift, then abruptly sleeping in when Yondu – sadistic asshole – tried to match him.

Kraglin’s anger kept him ticking over, although it wore duller and duller as the days crept on.

He missed him.

He missed that jolly, nasty bastard, who’d as soon chuckle at a rookie’s joke as he would at that same rookie tripping and getting diced by an extractor fan. He missed that sense of  _synchrony,_ of knowing he could swoop his pistol around at a target and Yondu’d be right there to cover him, laughter and smoke seeding the air, light glancing off the metal in his wily grin.

It was easy to forgive someone when they weren’t there. Far, far  _too_ easy.

Especially since Yondu did the one thing he’d never in all his years as a space pirate been renowned for. He gave up.

He could make life hell for Kraglin. Dole out scrub shifts, make him wash the matter processor from the sewage atomizer to the reconstitution core.

Hell, he could’ve pulled rank the moment Kraglin crowded him against the floor of his cabin. Could’ve locked him in the brig, or gotten it over with and spaced him, so that Kraglin could never swear fealty to another crew.

Kraglin sighed. The midnight hour approached; Ravagers gargled snores from the dormitories that encased the Bridge in a semicircular bubble. Yondu’s cabin listed on one side and Kraglin’s on the other.

If they took fire, only one half of the ship was likely to be critically damaged. The survivors would have a leader to look up to during those brief, fraught minutes before they were consumed by flame or slurped out into the void.

But the turn of the watches wasn’t the only thing creeping up on Kraglin. He’d given his sac a thorough fondle that morning, and sure enough, he was on track.

Six eggs. They were squishy as of yet, but they’d toughen over the upcoming week, turning to malleable rubber. This was half a load – six more were due to join them.

Then? Then came the Lay.

For three cycles, Kraglin would go wild from the need to push his eggs somewhere soft and fleshy and  _warm._ The pressure would grow until his sac hung swollen, bashing off his thighs and agonizing to the touch. That was when A-Chiltarians became prone to biting unwitting bystanders and defiling innocent socks.

Kraglin had been looking forwards to it, until Yondu went and nobbled his plans. He hadn’t knotted a body that wasn’t made of silica in a very long time, and even bot-hooker fees became extortionate when you had to hire one 24/7 for a week, until all those grooming and nesting urges had been flushed from your system.

Yondu agreed to go through that with him. Yondu grinned and hooked his leg around Kraglin’s waist – pretty impressive, considering how high that waist was from the floor – and said that so long as Kraglin didn’t mind depositing his unfertilized progeny in a back door rather than a front one, he was free for business.

Kraglin unsnarled a tangle from his arm fur. He made some meaningless adjustment to their plotting charts, flinging them left-ways around a black hole rather than right. If he miscalculated and they got sucked in, compressed down to a single atom then blasted out above Sakaar’s greasy junk piles – well. At least it would give him something else to focus on.

“Kraglin?”

That was Vim, his watch buddy. She was a tall woman of indeterminate race – hybrid, Kraglin suspected, although he valued his gizzards too much to ask. With ample bosoms and a lissom waist, if it weren’t for her mask and goggles and the unruly, sandy tangle of her hair, she’d be quite the charmer.

Kraglin’s tastes ran more to the blue. The small and stocky and blue, speared through with piercings, spread out on Kraglin’s bed dressed only in gold.

And – shit, if he was thinking like that, those Lay hormones were more potent than he’d thought.

He turned to her, struggling to keep his lips over his fangs. This close to his Lay, thinking too long on the subject of Yondu made the second row push out without any consultation from the rest of him.

“What?”

“You an’ captain.” She leaned on the edge of the console, hip cocked out to one side. “You better make up soon, is all. We got another two months left on this flight, and at this rate we’ll finish it with a halved crew.”

Oh yeah. The news filtered to Kraglin earlier. A mishap occurred during the morning hours of the cycle; Yondu threatened to keel haul whichever idjit hadn’t stirred his caff-pills thoroughly into his morning pick-me-up. When reminded he made his morning pick-me-up himself, Yondu very nearly enacted the same punishment on his chief gunner.

A small union of Bridge crew petitioned him otherwise, reminding him what would happen if they got spat out into Kreespace and had to face an Aster-class ship with a rookie at the canons. Had it not been for them... Well. Yondu might be a devious sonuvabitch, but not even he thought straight when he was angry.

Of  _course_ everyone expected Kraglin to smooth shit over. Of  _course_ he was supposed to bow to Yondu and feign like he was in the wrong. Because captain was a spoiled brat who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

 _You never said no,_ whispered a voice in the back of Kraglin’s head. He did his best to ignore it.

Fact remained: if cap’n truly gave a shit, if he truly wanted him to stay, an apology would be a damn fine place to start. And so far? Nada. Zilch.

Kraglin glowered at Vim until she went to mop dust from the screens of their tracking gear. Three months in faster-than-light meant three months for maintenance. When Kraglin wasn’t mooching about the Bridge, watching comets get sucked along by their contrail before frittering away, distributed across a lightyear in minuscule shards of glitter, he holed up below decks, patching leaks, pinning wiring behind insulator panels, keeping his hands busy to distract himself from reality at large.

The week didn’t pass quickly. This was mostly due to trepidation. Kraglin’s Lay loomed at its far end, and his eggs gained weight with every passing Cycle. Finally, the day before he was due another appointment with the laundry vat, Yondu pulled an unexpected move from his repertoire.

“A party?” Kraglin repeated. Vim nodded.

They were on watch again, space sliding by in sludgy rivulets. It looked deceptively slow, the gloss of stars past their windshield. But in truth, it was the same effect as when you watched the wheel of a lorry and it appeared to be rolling backwards. So many bright specks whizzed by per millisecond that your brain couldn’t focus on them all simultaneously. It selected a few bright lines to track, carving sequences out of chaos.

Kraglin knew how that felt. Captain liked to be unpredictable, but this?

“Yeah.” Vim was never a woman of many words, but she’d swandived past laconic into all-out terse. Whatever races combined to form her, none of them needed much sleep – Vim worked one and a half shifts and received one and a half times the regular crew pay, and that seemed to be a model that worked out for everyone.

It meant Kraglin had an ear on Yondu’s activities and vice versa. He bet the captain didn’t have to push so hard for information though.

“Any details? Is there an occasion?”

“He says,” came the stilted reply, “that it’s to celebrate us making it through this trip without guttin’ one another.”

“We ain’t through the trip yet.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He's the only jackass what's threatened to gut anybody.”

Vim’s jaw ground under her mask. “Tell me about it.”

“Anyway, a party ain't nothin' but a waste of rations.”

“I’m actin’-quartermaster.” Since Yondu threw the other guy in the brig over some meaningless infraction. Most likely, it involved caff pills. “I  _know._ ”

Kraglin frowned. “You ain’t tried to talk him outta this?”

Vim arched a brow. Her goggles were made of a thick colored plastic, the sort used by light-sensitive species to protect their eyes. It distorted the features beneath; she gazed out at Kraglin through umber bottle-bottoms.

Kraglin sighed. “Point.” If you tried to convince captain one of his plans was crappy, he’d determine to do it out of pure spite. “Why d’you think he’s doing this then?”

If Vim’s eyebrow rose any higher it would escape from her goggles and flee into her hairline.

Kraglin’s shoulders slumped. Right. Escapism. Hurt. Anger. All plenty of reasons to drown yourself in a bottle. He could kinda see the temptation.

“Dammit. I suppose I’d better go along, stop him doin’ anythin’ stupid. Thanks, Vim.”

Vim didn’t reply. Kraglin did her the favor of conducting the rest of their shift in silence.

 

* * *

 

The party was anything but. You couldn’t spell ‘Hullaballoo’ without ‘Ravager’ – at least not in Xandarian Common.

Yondu’d lugged a pair of speakers from scrap-storage. He erected them on the galley serving table, where they boomed out classic hits from an A’askavarian screech band, volume amped high enough to make the grills in the ceiling bounce and rattle.

Dust shimmered under strobe lights. Moonshine crates insulated the walls. They trapped the heat of the writhing bodies, transforming the mess hall into a minestrone of pirates, bubbling on cusp of a broil.

They drank. They danced. They drank some more.

Yondu whirled in the middle of his bacchanal. Hogging the stage. Coat stripped, chains thumping. Blue skin bright as satin.

When Kraglin sloped through the double-doors, following the bass thud and the off-key yodelling, cap’n swirled viciously to the music, his eyes screwed shut and a bottle sloshing in his fist. It wasn’t so much a dance as a typhoon: an excuse to swing at anyone who ventured close.

Predictably, the crew drew back. Yondu span in a plague circle. He staggered, draining a flask that looked like it had been nicked from medical surplus. Moist paper crumbled under his nails, from where he’d peeled off the  _not for biotic consumption_ label.

Kraglin sighed. He trudged through the crowds, exchanging half-hearted smiles and jostling his egg sac as little as necessary. The Ravagers parted for him, their mumbles a backing drone under the music. When he reached Yondu, he tapped him on the shoulder, mentally preparing himself for knuckles to the nose.

He didn't get knuckles. He got the whole damn bottle.

Smash.

It broke over Kraglin’s head, a bright pop of pain. Like someone nailed him with a firecracker.

Kraglin crumpled. The glass broke, a thousand tinkling shards. They reflected Yondu’s shocked face as if Kraglin’s eye-lenses had been fed through a shredder.

“Fuck,” he said, bewildered as his victim. “Krags?”

Kraglin picked himself up. None of the shards had stuck, although a hundred miniature cuts lanced under his fur, burning in the heat from the lights. His skull throbbed almost as hot as his egg sac. Luckily for him, A-Chiltarian bone density was thicker than most, otherwise he'd be looking at a concussion, if not a fractured skull.

“If yer tryin’ to apologize,” he said, brushing bloody glass from his fur, “yer makin’ a crappy start.”

Yondu watched him walk away. His eyes narrowed for every step Kraglin took.

Vim loitered too close. Yondu’s hand shot out. It latched on to her bottle.

She only resisted a moment. Wise girl. Captain wrestled it from her grip and kept right on drinking.

...Which meant that by the time he showed up at Kraglin’s cabin, stumbling and shambolic, slapping the biolock on the third try, he was well on his way to testing the upper limits of his toxicity tolerance.

Kraglin groaned. He’d been on his front, vindictively squashing his egg sac into the blankets in the hopes it would dull the pre-Lay throb. He rolled to face the figure silhouetted in his doorway, cuts stinging something wicked, and presented it with an upraised middle finger.

“Go away.”

Yondu thumped his own chest, although he had to lean on the doorframe for counterbalance. “I’m – I’m still yer cap’n, boy! Ya don’t tell me what to do!”

The warbles of an A’askavarian prima donna jiggled the rivets in the rafters. Kraglin nodded to them.

“Party’s still going on. Why ain’tchu there?”

As predicted, when Kraglin didn’t rise to the confrontation, Yondu wilted. He slouched to the nest, Kraglin shuffling to face him, wary in case a knife followed the bottle's earlier trajectory. But Yondu abided by the party’s no-weapons rules, which prevented their merry band of idiots from loosing a volley of blaster fire and scuppering the ship in a drunken scuffle.

There was nowhere to hide anything pointy. His signature coat, more threadbare around the bottom after every job, had been abandoned. Yondu showed off the blotchy mess of scars and tattoos on his torso.

Kraglin counted one less necklace than usual. He imagined it snapping, the thread frayed apart, gold beads skittering between dancing feet, scattered too far for them all to ever be gathered again.

“Why’re you  _here?_ What the hell’re ya doin’ – stop, sir, yer gonna fall over –“

Yondu clambered over the lip of the nest and deposited himself on Kraglin’s lap. It wasn’t especially graceful. But then again, neither was Kraglin’s whoop of pain as his captain crushed his egg sac.

“Ow! What the fuck? What the –“

Yondu slithered down his legs, clamping Kraglin’s between his.

“Why’d I keep hurtin’ ya,” he whispered. It sounded like he was asking himself, searching for an answer.

Kraglin bowed forwards. He clutched the painful bulb of his sac with one hand and his bruised temple with the other.

“Because you’re an  _a-hole,_ ” he hissed, jostling his bony knees. No chance of convincing Yondu of his inadequacy as a seat. The man had enough padding that he could liquefy on Kraglin like a cat, blunting all his angles, blanketing knife-sharp joints in blue. “Because ya don’t seem to know how to act any other fuckin’ way, an’ –“

“Want the truth?”

Kraglin’s rant petered to a halt.

“Huh,” he said, eloquent as ever. He uncurled gradually, groaning at every cramp. His lower abdomen tensed in preparation for tomorrow's Lay. Not noticing the body parked on his shins would take a helluva lot more willpower than Kraglin possessed.

Here was Yondu, regardless of whether Kraglin wanted him to be. He stank of liquor and sweat, and the same concoction shimmered on his skin: glistening trickles that wove between the jewels and the dirt.

His nipple piercings twinkled like a Beyonder’s lure, coaxing ships out past the furthest stars, never to be seen again.

“Ya want the truth?” he repeated, softer.

Vapors hung around his mouth, like he'd been gargling drain cleaner. Kraglin’s nostril hair shrivelled.

“Aw, sir. How much’d you drink?”

Yondu swallowed hard. "Enough.”

Enough for what? He wasn’t making sense. But what did Kraglin expect from the drunk guy?

“C’mon,” he grunted, patting Yondu’s hip. His instincts purred.  _Mate above him, mate over him, mate’s plump ass ready for his eggs..._

But instincts were instincts. His Lay had yet to strike; for now, at least, Kraglin could control himself.

“Sir, let's get ya to yer cabin, before ya fall asleep.”

Yondu shook his head. His bleary eyes swam to Kraglin’s face. “Nuh-uh. I got myself blotto so’s I could say this shit, cause there… There ain’t no way I’m gettin’ into it sober.”

Plausible. But as-of-yet, Yondu had yet to reveal anything other than that he was still comfortable barging into Kraglin’s space and ignoring his discomfort. 

Kraglin crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”

“Oh-okay.” Now that he had license to speak, for the first time since Kraglin knew him, Yondu seemed lost for words.

 

Bashful. When had Yondu Udonta ever been  _bashful?_

A big part of Kraglin insisted the expression didn’t suit him. Yondu’s features should only ever be animated by fierce snarls and fiercer grins.

A larger part, lulled by lust, wanted to see more. Wanted that drunk flush, that giddy tremble of lashes, that slow peel of Yondu’s tongue from the roof of his mouth when Kraglin had Mate on his back and wailing, begging for another egg.

“I was hopin’,” Yondu said. The resonance from the party muffled the words, but Kraglin heard them nevertheless. “I was  _hopin’,_  okay.”

Fingers trailed up his side, agitating the hair through his flimsy shirt.

“I was hopin’ that you were dealin’ with it,” Yondu continued, and he could’ve been grinding down or just adjusting his posture; no way for Kraglin to tell. Cap’n always was a fidgeter. “For me. Because ya liked me. Even if ya hated what I got in my pants, even if it made ya wanna spill yer guts, ya were willin’ to put up with it. Because you an’ me, y’know?”

Oh. Well. He hadn’t been that far from the mark.

A guilty worm inched around Kraglin's brain. If only Yondu said  _that_ when he confronted him in this same room, not one month before. If only he hadn't made it all about him taking what he wanted. 

Yondu swallowed again. The motion descended through his throat and into his chest. His pectorals swelled and shrunk around a sharp breath, and his jewellery murmured its approval, a tinkle that continued as Yondu kept moving: incidental little swivels of his hips.

Kraglin didn’t call him out on it. For a start, the guy scarcely seemed to realize what he was doing. Also. Well,  _hot damn._

He bit back his growl when the teasing circles stopped. Yondu’s shaky fingers tucked under his chin.

“But – but if I were wrong, then… Then I were wrong. Shoulda paid more attention. Shoulda done it all different, Krags.”

Kraglin considered it. Not the best apology, not on the surface – for a start, the ‘s’ word had yet to be uttered. But then again, he knew better than to hold out for miracles.

“Huh,” he said.

Slowly – very slowly – he raised his arm and looped it over Yondu’s shoulders. Their textures clashed even as their colors melded together: Yondu smooth and velvety, Kraglin a coarse-furred shawl.

Yondu froze. Then, before Kraglin could overthink that, he burrowed into it. He parked on Kraglin’s ovi’ again, but it wasn’t so awful when Kraglin sat upright, egg sac protected by his thighs. It certainly wasn’t awful with Yondu’s legs wrapped around his waist from the front, his bare chest squashed on Kraglin’s, necklaces crushed between them as he snuffled into the fur around Kraglin’s neck:

“’M real drunk.”

Kraglin’s half-smile tugged at his lip. “Yeah. I can tell.”

“You still mad at me?”

“Little bit,” Kraglin revealed. Yondu went slack with misery.

“I  _knew_ it.”

“But only,” Kraglin continued, before the warm puddle could evacuate his lap and hunt out a dark corner to melt in, “because you were fuckin’ right, you idjit. I  _was_ tryin’. For you. Just need to move a bit slower, is all.”

He decided against mentioning his thoughts from their doomed tryst – specifically, his wish to only ever fuck Yondu from behind. That was the last thing the guy needed to hear.

What went through his head when Kraglin asked him to turn around? Nothing pleasant, Kraglin was sure.

But he hadn’t said  _no_  either. Perhaps Kraglin stood guilty of missing a few signs of his own.

“You shoulda told me,” he said, running his claws over Yondu’s scarred back. “Shoulda said something sooner, rather than give me all that crap.”

Yondu shivered when Kraglin’s nails brushed lower, towards the base of his spine and the low-slouched rim of his pants. “I ain’t too good at talkin’ ‘bout shit.”

Kraglin had noticed. Like he noticed Yondu getting softer and softer in his arms, strength seeping like water from a sponge.

As nice as it would be to let him nod off like this, drooling on Kraglin’s shoulder, if they wanted to get better at communication there was no place better to start.

“Hey,” he said, nudging him. “If ya fall asleep, I can’t promise you ain’t gonna wake up with me fuckin’ my eggs up yer ass.”

Yondu moaned. Humidity frizzed the hair along the tendon in Kraglin's neck. “Do ya promise?”

“Idjit.”

Kraglin fondly smacked his rump. He lay down flat, rolling Yondu’s deadweight gently to one side. He starfished on impact, barging Kraglin against the nest side – then gave up all pretences and tucked up like a pillbug, his head on Kraglin’s chest. Then, determinedly not looking at him, he shimmied off his pants.

The light was low enough that Kraglin saw nothing he didn't want to. He settled his hand on Yondu's hip, nails scoring the plump around the bone.

If any tension remained in his captain, that drained it. He tossed a leg over Kraglin – daring, like he was waiting for him to protest. Then, when that received nothing but a claw tracing his tattoos, he shut his eyes and set to finding out how much of the fluff poking through the rips in Kraglin's vest he could inhale before he sneezed.

Centaurian livers were miraculous things, if they could imbibe such a quantity of spirits and still leave the guy lucid enough to consent to a spot of early-morning buggery. The pulse in Kraglin’s egg sac wasn’t  _pleasant_  exactly, but knowing he had a willing mate did wonders for the discomfort. It struck a cosy match in Kraglin’s chest, as he pulled the blanket over them and shoved the socks he’d stolen from the laundry pod – just in case – down the crack between the beds, lost to the spidery dark.

Yondu’s genitals hadn’t magically mutated into a Carrier slit. But at least the two of them were on the same page.

Kraglin was going to do his damned best to get used to Yondu’s holes – all ten of the horrible little things. And Yondu was gonna let him pull back whenever he needed to and not take it too personally if he had to sprint for a waste receptacle, because exposure therapy only worked when you knew your exit strategy.

 

* * *

 

When morning came, the Lay jittered inside him, sparks flashing behind Kraglin’s sleep-dry eye lenses. He licked them twice, enjoying the stillness and the stale rumble of Yondu’s snores.

The tranquility didn’t last. The burn grew, and grew, and  _grew,_ hot as a dab of capsicum. It’d only get worse the longer he left it.

Kraglin, for once, was all too happy to give in to baser instinct. He nudged his captain off him and onto his belly, rubbing his teeth over the satin-smooth scar on his nape. His second set of fangs itched at the roof of his mouth, pushing down through the palette, pricking his tongue so he tasted his own salty blood.

He opened him gently – or at least, as gently as he could. It took several pauses and calming breaths to work slick fingers inside.

He yearned to forego the prep, fuck on deep and fill him full. But he forced himself to slow, forced himself to relish it, the build, the need, as he stretched the plush ring between forefinger and thumb.

Yondu burbled something nonsensical, clutching the nearest pillow. Kraglin’s lube-coated fingers shook. Sleep kept Yondu lax; he eased open beautifully, flowering around his knuckles.

That didn't matter. Minutes stretched to years in Kraglin’s feverish mind.

He needed it. He needed him.  _Now._

By the time he got Yondu's hole to that puffy state where he'd take anything Kraglin gave, his higher brain functions had dissolved. He only just remembered to remove his fingers before he set the tip of his ovi’ against the slippery ring and  _pushed_.

 _Stars._  It was everything he ever imagined.

Tight. So tight. So tight and silky and  _soft…_

Kraglin stroked sticky fingers up and down Yondu's flanks. He inhaled that strange autumnal aroma: arousal, wet leaves, brine.

His captain mumbled. His snores hitched and his thighs shuddered wider, as the ovi' firmed and flared to lock itself in. Yondu raised his hips, every muscle trembling. He woke with an ugly snort, clawing at the light as if he could grapple it away.

Oh yeah. Hangover.

Kraglin had just enough coherence to process that. His own head wasn't faring much better, thanks to a certain bottle, but Kraglin could deal with that.

He bent over Yondu, grunting as knot tissue pulsed around his base. He flattened his hand over Yondu's sore eyes, listening to the squish of slick on the sheets and the pop as his knot pierced Yondu's rim.

The sphincter between his sac and ovi' opened. An egg squeezed up and along, a massage ball that rippled into Yondu one contraction at a time. And, as his first egg pushed home and Yondu flopped limp and breathless, Kraglin decided that while things were far from perfect, they could always be a helluva lot worse.

 

* * *

 

Yondu regained the capacity for speech after his third cup of caff. Or at least, comprehensible speech – he made plenty of attempts during egg number two, all of them complimentary.

“So,” he said, dissolving onto Kraglin's shins with an indolent yawn. “That was fun.”

Kraglin put his half-finished caff pot down on the desk, clearing a space for it amid depowered ship-spec holos and datapads containing the details of their recent fuel outputs, all abandoned until after his Lay. Between bouts, his brain cells weren't bushwhacked enough to fudge Yondu's order.

He'd rung down to the galley for the caff components – hot water, granules, sweetener, a sickly amount of cream. The cook crew were more than happy to deliver. They refused to brew it themselves though, fearing that they'd be lashed together and used as a barnacle-scaler on the ship's underside.

Kraglin did his best to reassure them that Yondu's tyrannical rampage was of the past. He didn't do a stellar job. He cut a daunting figure himself: snarling into the comm, voice an octave more guttural than usual and possessive claws raking over a blue thigh that he strongly hoped hadn't been visible. But the caff was rich and fatty and due to give Yondu a heart attack in twenty-five years, so captain was happy and all was good.

Those same blue thighs squirmed together now, soaked with silvery Lay-fluid. By now, Yondu had disposed of the first two eggs. The next set matured at the base of Kraglin's ovi. The contractions hadn't begun yet, but they didn't have long. Every time Yondu shifted the slick glistened, and a few more of Kraglin's mental processes devoted themselves to the need to breed.

And equally, the need to keep his mate happy.

“You don't gotta hide them,” he said. The extra teeth weren't conducive to conversation, but Yondu got the gist. His cheeks went a truly lovely shade of navy, ears dipped in indigo paint.

“ _You_ don't gotta look at 'em.”

Only Yondu could make consent-checking competitive. Kraglin licked his eyeballs, taking his time to polish every facet as he worked out the phrasing. His brain was mush with a side-dollop of lust, but for Yondu, he tried. For Yondu he tried pretty fucking hard.

Yondu stayed in his tucked-up ball, morning light dappling off his skin.

“Just realized thas the same tongue ya put up my bunghole,” he said conversationally. Kraglin nodded. It sure was. “Guess yer kind don't gotta worry about pink-eye, huh.”

This wasn't a sexy conversation. It definitely wasn't the conversation Kraglin wanted to – needed to – have. He crawled closer, wincing at the throb in his sac. Another hour and he'd be raring to go, but for now he could stomach the burn. Long enough to hammer his thoughts into strings that resembled sentences, at least vaguely.

“Gotta get used to. Them. Part of you. You're good.”

Yondu opened his mouth, offended. Before he could protest that he was not and never would be  _good,_  what with being a self-sufficient space buccaneer to whom 'morality' was a dirty word, Kraglin cupped his curled-up legs, kneading along the hamstring, where Yondu was strong and soft and just a little scarred.

“Wanna,” he reiterated, staring up Yondu's body.  "Wanna get'chu off."

While eyelids still made him  _just_ a little uncomfortable, there was something kinda hot about watching Yondu's pupils blow.

“If ya puke I'm demotin' ya,” he breathed. After several encouraging pats and tugs from Kraglin, he spread his legs.

Kraglin didn't puke. He was very proud to admit that.

Oh, it wasn't a  _pleasant_ experience by any means; spit filled his mouth and revulsion his body. But when Yondu made to squash his thighs back together, Kraglin rested a steadying hand on each hip. 

“Lemme look,” he said, earnest as he could manage with sixty four teeth prodding his tongue. “Just lemme look a while.”

Yondu said nothing. But the holes scrunched closed and opened again, and his necklaces rattled as he drew a shaky breath.

Kraglin took that as an okay. He forced himself to study each little pocket head-on.

His curiosity very almost curled back on itself, something withering deep inside. A thread of slick drizzled from the center hole. The feather-light trickle agitated the skin, and Yondu twitched like Kraglin had stroked him with his gaze.

Kraglin didn't touch him though, not yet. No sense pushing himself. They had two more days of intermittent Lay-sessions, and then several for cosying up in Kraglin's nest. Plenty of time to get to know each other.

“You okay?” Yondu pinched the tufts on his ears. His legs quivered, splayed wide. “Ain't frozen up?”

Kraglin smiled. “Nah. Take some gettin' used to. But. Wanna get used to 'em.”

Yondu smelt like autumn. How long since those brisk windy days when Kraglin ran around his homeworld in a flurry of coppery leaves, young and carefree and never once imagining life-to-come? The Lay always made him disgustingly sentimental, but maybe here and now, that was a good thing.

They all needed a little sentiment sometimes.

Yondu would never agree – not out loud. He scoffed, flopping dramatically over the cushions. His thighs didn't close, but he did cup his crotch, for which Kraglin was ashamedly grateful. “You ain't never gonna find 'em sexy.”

Kraglin shrugged. “Prob'ly not.” Then, at Yondu's scoff - “Rest of you's mighty fine. Wanna put eggs in ya.”

“Some compliment. You'd put eggs in socks if I left ya alone.”

Kraglin decided against informing Yondu of just how accurate that was. He prowled forwards, lying over Yondu so his belly hair tickled the holes. “Wanna keep ya safe.”

Yondu folded his arms, although his cheeks shone damn near luminous. “I'm cap'n. Don't need no protectin'.”

Kraglin growled, frustrated by his inability to convey all he wanted. “Wanna get ya off,” he tried. That got Yondu's attention. “Wanna... wanna cover ya in jewels and uh. Put. Lil' diamonds in ya. All yer holes. So's they sparkle. Make 'em pretty for me.”

Yondu's fingers wound into his muttonchops, tying tight, sharp little knots. “Well, fuck.”

Emboldened, Kraglin continued. “Wanna wait for the end of a Lay. Push all eggs in at once. Wanna... wanna stuff ya full as a carrier. Wanna breed ya good, baby.”

Yondu scrunched his nose. “Y'know my kind lay eggs in ponds, not people? Don't really got them instincts.”

Another way in which they were incompatible. What the hell did the universe have against their happiness?

When Kraglin drooped, Yondu hauled him in with a sigh, nose-to-nose, breathing each other's breath.

“But if yer gonna try for me, guess it's only fair.” He reached between them, palming Kraglin's sac. He kept the pressure light, but Kraglin still latched onto his shoulder, teeth scraping without digging in. “Figure we've both gotta lot of shit to get used to.”

The holes chewed on Kraglin's belly fluff. They clasped on and let go, opening and closing like hungry baby birds. He let them get on with it. His ovi' tingled and his senses sung, and Yondu's scent intermingled with his own, rich as fresh-poured wine.

“Got a lil' while before next round,” he mumbled, over the patch of Yondu's neck he'd so-nearly bitten, now moist and warm from his panting breath. “Few minutes. Y'know. If ya wanna check up on crew.”

Yondu smirked at him. “Vim's in charge. Think they can look after themselves, just for a bit.” He gave the egg sac a delicate squeeze.

“Stars, cap'n.”

Yondu's grin glittered at close range. His stubble scratched Kraglin's wispy chin fluff, and he hitched his holes against his belly in a cocksure grind. Kraglin didn't complain – but comforted himself that if he did, Yondu would stop.

Most likely.

For now, Yondu fondled his next two eggs and whispered his question into Kraglin's slack mouth:

“Think ya can hold onto these while I go grab me some diamonds?”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> **As always - kudos and comments = my undying love! Obligatory notice that getting consent for somno from a drunk person is Really Shitty IRL.**


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